Coal gasifiers are core components of coal-based polygeneration systems for power and chemical production. To study the effects of operational parameters on the performance of entrained flow coal gasifiers, this paper presents an equivalent compartment model (CM) using the Aspen Plus process simulator. The CM blocking is established based on gasifier flow field analysis, using a number of compartments. A simple configuration of these compartments involving material recirculation should be able to simulate the main flow and provide the temperature and gas component distributions. The model predictions exhibit good agreement with industrial data in the model validation. The influences of the oxygen-to-carbon ratio (ROC) and the coal slurry concentration on the gasification performance are discussed. Within the calculation range, the increase in the coal slurry concentration enhances the yield of the effective compositions in product gas. For a given slurry concentration of 62%, the efficient gas yield is a maximum for ROC of 1.43 kg/kg, whereas the oxygen consumption is a minimum for ROC of 1.37 kg/kg. According to the intended final use, however, choosing a reasonable ROC to obtain a higher efficient syngas yield and lower oxygen consumption can be flexible. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.